Wacky Janus camera mod adds a second lens to a camera (but has some problems)

One of the fun things with cheapo film cameras is that you can play with, modify, and nearly destroy them without feeling bad. One such modification is the dual-lensed Janus camera, which while it might not work very well, certainly shows off an awful lot of innovation and what you can learn from an experimental failure.

Over at Lomography, user Stratski had been experimenting with exposing both sides of analog film. But rather than reload the film after shooting it once, she built a pinhole in the back of a thrifted point-and-shoot, and so Janus 1.0 was built. Her later attempts at a more advanced design were less successful, but still interesting for their failures.

Stratski wanted to add a proper lens to Janus 2.0, and so hacked apart a second point-and-shoot camera, installing the lens and shutter system onto the back. Unfortunately, a standard shutter has much tighter tolerances for focal plane than a pinhole camera, so the rear-exposed images were not in focus. Another attempt to fix the focal distance for Janus 2.1 didn't work any better.

While the final project may have been something of a failure, Stratski's attempts to "Frankenstein" on a second lens to the back of a camera are exceedingly cool. And since this sort of point-and-shoot is cheap to the point of being almost free, there's no great loss in having hacked up a couple of cameras to do it.

Below are a few images from the process of creating the Janus camera mod along with an image captured with the crazy dual-lens creation. To see more, go here.